Home-made Coconut Cake, by Beverly Hicks Burch

Home-made Coconut Cake

By Beverly Hicks Burch

Several years ago, a late friend would wow friends and family with a home-made coconut cake. It was often in demand and a real treat when she presented you with one. Where she discovered the recipe I’ll never know. Barbara is no longer with us having succumbed to cancer over 10 years ago.

While browsing through my mom’s cookbooks I found one that our former church had published ca the mid 1980s. Towards the back in the dessert section, there was Barb’s yummy Coconut Cake recipe bigger than Dallas.

Sweet memories and a sweet cake…too good to pass up and too good not to share…

Barb’s Coconut Cake

By Beverly Hicks Burch

Filling:

2 – 6 oz. packages frozen coconut

1 – ½ cups sugar

1 carton sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring

Mix together and set aside. Place between the split layers of cake once they have cooled.

Cake:

1 box yellow cake mix

1 small box instant vanilla pudding

1 cup water

½ cup oil

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°. Combine ingredients and mix for 3 minutes. Pour into 2 nine inch pans and bake for 30 minutes. Let layers cool and then split then in half.

Icing:

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup light Karo syrup

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

2 egg whites

4 tablespoons water

3/4 cup sugar

Add ingredients to a double boiler. Beat to mix. When the water in the bottom of the double boiler begins to boil, remove from heat. Beat the mixture for 3-1/2 to 4 minutes until stiff peaks form. Ice the top and sides of the assembled cake. Garnish with coconut.

© 2009 Beverly Hicks Burch All Rights Reserved.

What a Way to Celebrate! by Beverly Hicks Burch

What a Way to Celebrate!

By Beverly Hicks Burch

I don’t think I’ve ever picked up a magazine that Phyllis Hoffman had anything to do with and didn’t like it. The gal has a golden touch…and to sweeten the pot she’s a native of my beloved Alabama.

Over the years, Phyllis has built a publishing empire that is headquartered in Birmingham. I remember some of her work for a quilting magazine and I loved what she did. Once Phyllis was no longer with the magazine, I could certainly tell. The “sparkle” just seemed to be gone.

Currently Phyllis’ Hoffman Media, LLC publishes a line of magazines that appeal to women in general and Southern gals in particular. Momma has been a devotee of Tea Time and Southern Lady. I would say Phyllis and her crew are certainly giving Southern Living a good run for their money!

A couple of weeks ago I was at Joann’s Fabric with my friend Shari. She was hunting fabric for a new project she was about to start. As we were on our way to the check out, we passed the magazine rack and the cover of one in particular caught my eye.

On the front was a recipe for a moist and delicious “Key Lime Pound Cake”. Utter those two words around me…Key Lime…and it will have the same effect of throwing on the emergency break of a speeding locomotive! In other words, they will stop me in my tracks…My favorite yogurt is Yoplait’s whipped Key Lime Pie. Yum!

Naturally I brought the magazine home! Upon inspection once I had it in my grasp, I couldn’t help but think, “Well, of course.” It was a special edition called Phyllis Hoffman Celebrate Spring. The gal with the golden touch strikes again!

If you like pound cake, run, don’t walk to find this issue. It won’t last long. The Key Lime Pound Cake wasn’t the only recipe in the issue. Other mouth watering pound cake recipes include: Peach Pound Cake, Blueberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake, and Dreamsicle Pound Cake along with a few others. It is a pound cake bonanza! There are other recipes for other tastes, including a nice section on Mexican food for Cinco de Mayo.

I personally can’t wait to try the Key Lime Pound Cake, oh and Key Lime pie is my Daddy’s favorite, so I’m sure this will find its way to his table also.

If you get a chance give the cake a try…and check out Phyllis’ many publications. You certainly won’t be sorry!

© 2009 Beverly Hicks Burch All Rights Reserved.

Key Lime Pound Cake

Adapted from a recipe in Celebrate Spring

½ unsalted butter, softened

½ cup vegetable oil

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs, separated

3 cups sifted cake flour

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup sour cream

2 tablespoons lime zest

½ cup Key Lime juice

Preheat oven to 325°. Prepare a 10 inch tube pan with nonstick baking spray that includes flour.

Beat butter and shortening together in a large bowl on medium speed with an electric mixer. Beat until creamy. Gradually at the sugar and beat until fluffy.

Next add the egg yolks, one at a time. Beat well after each egg yolk addition.

Sift together the dry ingredients. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter/egg/sugar mixture. Alternate with the sour cream. Start and end each addition with flour and beat well after each addition.

Next, add lime zest and lime juice. Mix well.

Beat egg whites in a large bowl until stiff peaks form. Fold the whites into the cake batter.

Pour into the tube pan and bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool cake in the pan for 10 minutes. Then remove from pan and continue cooling on a wire rack. Dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Red Velvet Cake Made Easy, by Beverly Hicks Burch

Red Velvet Cake Made Easy

By Beverly Hicks Burch

There is a cake in the South that is almost mythical. This legendary cake is baked and served on almost all special occasions…especially Christmas, family occasions, holidays, social functions…you name it. If there is an occasion, then it’s good enough a reason to bake a Red Velvet Cake.

The origin of the Red Velvet Cake is enigmatic. No one can put an exact point of ancestry to this perennial favorite.

This cake has been a favorite in my family for years. I can recall making it from scratch as far back as the 1980’s. It is a cake my Aunt LaRue has been known to make at the drop of the hat…and been loved for doing so.

There is no small effort in making a Red Velvet Cake from scratch. The recipe usually includes buttermilk, vinegar, a smidgen of cocoa, red food coloring…and time. How you top it off or ice it is debatable. The recipe I have is for a roux type cooked/boiled type icing. I know…sounds funky, but it’s really creamy and yummy. Many times the icing is a cream cheese icing…with or without nut…your choice.

Now, believe it or not, before Tall and Handsome married me and came back South he had never heard of a Red Velvet Cake. *Gasp* Unthinkable! No true Steel Magnolia could think of passing this life without delighting the taste buds of her beloved with a Southern delight like the Red Velvet Cake. It just had to be…at least once at this Christmas was the right time.

Now this BamaSteelMagnolia™ learned a long time ago there are more ways than one to skin the proverbial rabbit. I had decided to make this delight for Christmas, but given the season and the fact that T & H would be home for some extra time at Christmas and I wanted to spend time with him and not pots and pans. Somewhere socked away in my memory, I recalled a quicker version of the Red Velvet Cake.

You see years ago I purchased a cookbook called The Cake Doctor, by Anne Byrne. If you don’t have this cookbook, grab it up! Within the covers was a recipe of Quick Red Velvet Cake and Ms Byrne’s insight into her quest for the history and origin of the cake.

It seems she did a search through many of her Southern cookbooks including her Junior League cookbooks and found nothing until she thumbed through a cookbook called Tennessee Tables. (Could this be more exciting for an East Tennessee born gal like me?!)

This cookbook had been published by the Junior League of Knoxville in 1982 and included a recipe for a Red Velvet Cake on page 204. The recipe was from Regas Restaurant and had been a specialty at the restaurant. It was supposedly served to Liberace when he came to town in 1970.

Thinking she had hit pay dirt, Ms Byrne called Louise Durman, food editor at the Knoxville News-Sentinel at the time. She was hoping she had discovered the point of origin of the cake.

Well, strike one and maybe strike out. All she could be told was that people in East Tennessee loved the cake (big surprise) and had been known to make Green Velvet Cakes at Christmas and Big Orange Cakes to coincide with University of Tennessee football games (go Vols!).

Now, coincidentally, own my own while living a little further South down in Birmingham, I had made a “Green Velvet Cake” more out of necessity than out of purpose. I had run out of red food coloring and all I had on hand was green food coloring. You see, the food coloring has no effect on the taste of the cake whatsoever…just the look. I would give you a little warning here though…green food coloring may affect your…ummm for lack of a better word digestive emissions…

Ms Byrne also had heard the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City might be the creator of the Red Velvet Cake recipe, but when she called the chef there, he informed her the hotel could not take credit for the cake.

My sneaking suspicion is a creative little Steel Magnolia in some sleepy little Southern town needed a cake to take to a function. And, wanting to “wow” and wanting to be a tad of a rebel she decided to pour a whole bottle of red food coloring into her cake batter to set tongues a wagging…instead, she created a tradition.

As usual, I took the recipe in the book and “Bev-ized” it. The adaptations I made to this recipe were to use low fat products to reduce calories and fat. So without further adieu…here is Red Velvet Cake Made Easy:

Red Velvet Cake Made Easy

1 box German Chocolate cake mix with pudding

1 cup low fat sour cream

½ cup water

½ cup canola oil (or vegetable oil)

1 – 1 ounce bottle red food coloring

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 9 inch cake pans. Be sure to shake out excess flour.

2. Add cake mix, low fat sour cream, water, oil food coloring, eggs and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Mix with an electric mixer for one minute on low speed. Increase the speed to medium and beat 2 – 3 more minutes, scrapping down the sides.

3. Divide the batter evenly between the two cake pans and place in the preheated oven. Bake 28 – 30 minutes or until the cake springs bake when lightly touched (or a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean).

4. Cool pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pans and cool a further 30 minutes.

5. Ice with Cream Cheese Frosting. Keep in the refrigerator.

Cream Cheese Icing

1 8 oz. package reduced fat cream cheese, softened

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

3 ¾ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer. Mix at low speed for 30 seconds.

2. Add sugar a little bit at a time, blending well after each addition. After all sugar is added mix for one minute.

3. Add vanilla, increase speed to medium and mix for one minute or until icing is fluffy.

Enjoy!

© 2009 Beverly Hicks Burch All Rights Reserved.